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Finishing with a Flourish: Filippi

Ds Virgin Racing had an incredibly strong end of season three as Sam Bird picked up two victories in New York, as the British team challenged at the front of the field on a more consistent basis.

Sylvain Filippi the Chief Technology Officer at Ds Virgin Racing put the team’s improved pace down to the increased understanding of how their car performed during the race.

“Throughout season three the car was good enough to win races. We had the efficiency, the weight. We just needed to get our homework right, which we did towards the end of the season.

“We then were arriving at the race track with the perfect strategy, a good simulation data, which meant when we went out in FP1 our data started to match with what we had in the sim. We had this towards the end of the season which saw us rocket towards the front in the races,” explained Filippi.

At the start of the season, the Brtish team were still finding gaps between their simulation data and how their car actually performed on track which caused a fluctuation of performance from track to track.

“If you find big gaps between your FP1 data and your simulation work, then you need to work a lot harder to try and fix that, and in Formula E when you have a less than eight hours to fix it, it’s tough,” added Filippi.

Season four

As season four is set to be an evolution year, ahead of the big regulation changes set for season five. Filippi believes that the grid will become much closer together and any mistake in data from the simulation to the track could greatly affect your weekend.

“Next season, it will be even more important to make sure that our data correlates from the sim to practice because the grid will be extremely tight in terms of performance. So if you get it right you should be able to challenge for wins and podiums. If you get it wrong you may be well outside the points,” commented Filippi.

WIth Mahindra and Ds Virgin Racing beginning to challenge Audi Sport ABT and Renault e.Dams at the front of the field more consistently. it will be interesting to see who will come out of top during pre season testing ahead of season four.